Effective Strategic Planning



Effective Strategic Planning

Introduction

According to Cascella (2002) most business leaders and managers do not recognize the importance of strategic planning. Only few from amongst these business managers who do recognize the importance of strategic planning, are successful at translating and implementing their strategies into viable business results. A reason for this being that a lot of resources are dedicated to elaborate planning exercises, which is followed by a poor implementation process. Hence, an effective strategic plan's implementation is as important as the planning process.

This paper aims to discuss about the different components and aspects that makes for an effective strategic plan. This is done through discussing with the example of an organization. The organization chosen for discussion purposes is The Coca-Cola Company, which is one of the leading beverages brand in the world.

Discussion

One of the prime reasons for choosing this particular organization is because of its long and diverse history of operations. Coupled with, the fact that Coca-Cola has a strong global presence, which is reflective of a good example of an organization that has implemented strong strategic framework. A brief overview of the organization is presented as follows.

Organization Overview

The Coca-Cola Company was first established in 1886 in Atlanta, U.S, by the pharmacist John Pemberton, by a chance incident. Pemberton excited with its new formula invention, distributed the first sample for free and received a positive response by his customers. Thus, for the following days after the formula was invented, the samples were sold for three pence a glass, until this beverage became widely popular amongst the locals of the town. By end of the first year, the founder had sold an average of nine glasses a day. A century later his creation's annual output would exceed ten billion gallons of syrup. This highlights the enormous growth the company has received over the years (The Coca-Cola Company, 2013).

Similarly, the company saw a major boom in its growth in the late 1970's and onwards. With the passing time, the society was becoming more modern, as a result of new means of communications and cable TV. This presented the business with ample opportunities to expand business scale and consumer base. It was during the eighties that Coca-Cola launched its famous Diet Coke product, which became an instant hit with the consumers. Moreover, the company also brought about changes in the formula for coke to make it more appealing in taste for its consumers and provides it a differentiating edge with its competitors. Moreover, the company is also a premier sponsor of many mega events such as Olympics and FIFA world cup. Along with, having its business and manufacturing units all around the globe. Thus, in its one hundred and twenty-seven years of existence, the company has come a long way from a small set-up in a pharmacy shop to serving nearly 1.6 billion consumers around the world every day (The Coca-Cola Company, 2013).

Effective Strategic Planning

This segment of discussion highlights the importance of strategic planning for a large organization such as ...